Day 40: Philadelphia, PA to New York, NY

Sunday 30 May 2010 – 94 miles today – 6683 miles to date

We had an awesome breakfast at the hotel, with custom omelets and lots of other good stuff. Then we got our gear together and took off for NYC baby!!

Again it was only a short drive (good thing about all these north-east coast cities) of about 1.5 hours. Unfortunately 2 things hampered our entry to the big apple… an excess of tolls and traffic. Eventually we got into Manhattan and found our hotel in the upper west side. We were extremely lucky to get anything in Manhattan at all and we paid less than what we would have paid to stay in a 12 bed dorm in a hostel. There was only one queen bed bu there was a second room with a kitchenette and loads of room to lay our mattresses out on the floor.

Our hotel in the Upper West Side…

The weather was perfect so we didn’t waste any time getting set for a walk through Central Park to soak up some Sunday sun with thousands of others. We spent about 2 hours strolling from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir (only a few blocks from the hotel) right down to Columbus Circle at the south-west corner of the park. We kept walking down Broadway a few blocks then stopped in for a cheeky pint and watched the world walk by the window of the bar.

At night we ventured into the East Village and grabbed a meat pie from Tuck Shop on St. Mark’s Place. Then we had a couple of beers at Vazacs Horseshoe Bar.

We thought this may have been Jay-Z... but maybe not

The modern home office

Tents getting his stoop chill mode on

"Crack Tennies"?

A number of sinister explanations have been proposed as to why this is done. Some say that shoes hanging from the wires advertise a local crack house where crack cocaine is used and sold[1] (in which case the shoes are sometimes referred to as “Crack Tennies”).[citation needed] It can also relate to a place where Heroin is sold to symbolize the fact that once you take Heroin you can never ‘leave’: a reference to the addictive nature of the drug. Others claim that the shoes so thrown commemorate a gang-related murder, or the death of a gang member, or as a way of marking gang turf. Wikipedia